Long Island City Gentrification Watch

March 10, 2010 by missheather
Filed under: 11101, Long Island City, Long Island City Queens

I am certain a number of you have noticed I have been posting a lot of Long Island City material of late. I want it to be known there is a reason for this: yours truly is going to have a show of her photography at Creek & Cave next month!* Shortly after this deal was finalized with the curator (a very nice lady I would like to add) I came to the realization that if I am going to have a show in Long Island City it might behoove me to feature a photograph (or two) of Long Island City. To this end yesterday I bravely marched across the Pulaski Bridge in search of shutter bug fodder. What awaited me, however, was enough to make the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

Before I proceed I want to make something abundantly clear: it takes a lot to truly disturb me. When I climbed down the stairs at 53rd Avenue I heard the most gut-wrenching coughing you can imagine. Did this faze me? No, it didn’t. If anything it made me feel right at home. Eventually I happened upon the source of said sound. It was a woman. She was coughing up blood on the street. She looked up at me and said.

Excuse me miss, would you happen to have a napkin?

I gave her what I had: one paltry little napkin. I apologized that it was all I had (because I really did feel bad about this given the situation). She replied:

Thank you very much.

And then went back coughing in the most blood curdling manner imaginable. The rest of the afternoon I thought about this exchange. One simply does not see this kind common courtesy much anymore. This is a shame as the way I see it, if a woman coughing up blood under the Pulaski Bridge can be bothered with such pleasantries as “please” and “thank you” there really isn’t any excuse for the rest of us. Then again, I suppose I should expect as much from Greenpoint’s tonier neighbor to the north. But I digress.

It was about fifteen feet from this woman that I encountered something which disturbed me at a fundamentally core level. Words failed me. Fortunately I had my camera.